Sprint’s Xohm is coming to New York City, awarding the Mobile WiMAX contract to Samsung Electronics, reports the Washington Post.
Sprint had not previously mentioned NYC as one of its 35 cities slated for coverage by the end of 2008. Samsung had previously been awarded the Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Providence, R.I. and Boston markets as part of Sprint’s push to use the mobile WiMax wireless standard.
Samsung’s WiMAX business arm separately predicted its handset sales would top 40 million units in the third quarter, after selling a record 37.4 million handsets in the second quarter.
Neither company disclosed financial information regarding the contract. Samsung was awarded lead vendor status, which includes the manufacture and installation of radio access equipment and the supply of chipsets and mobile devices.
Sprint earlier said that manufacturers had committed to making 50 million WiMax devices for the U.S. market in the next three years. Sprint has said it expects the network to generate positive operating income before depreciation and amortization in 2010.
The company expects to reach a potential 100 million customers through 2008, with Sprint providing coverage to 70 million people and smaller partner Clearwire covering 30 million.
Sprint will launch WiMAX in 19 cities by April 2008. The Sprint WiMAX mobile broadband network will use the company’s extensive 2.5GHz spectrum holdings, which cover 85 percent of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets. Sprint has major WiMAX infrastructure contracts with Motorola, Samsung and Nokia.
- Motorola gear will be used in Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis
- Samsung gear will be used in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, Washington D.C. and now New York City.
- Nokia gear will be used in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Seattle.
Zyxel recently landed a WiMAX CPE contract with Sprint.
Meanwhile, Alcatel-Lucent is deploying Germany’s first commercial Mobile WiMAX network for regional telecommunications service provider, based in Saarbrucken. The project is being conducted in close cooperation with VSE NET, Inquam Broadband — a nationwide license holder in Germany. VSE NET will start in the autumn of 2007, with commercial operation set to start in January 2008.
The network will support high-speed Internet access and voice over IP (VoIP) at up to six Mbps. In the initial stage of the deployment, wireless broadband will be made available to residential and business customers in the sparsely populated northern Saar region, where DSL service is not economically viable. Inquam Broadband acquired the 3.5 GHz spectrum licenses, consisting of 42MHz, at a cost of EUR 17.6m million. Inquam Broadband GmbH is a joint venture between NextWave Wireless and investors.
Related Sprint and Clearwire articles on DailyWireless include; Sprint WiMAX: It’s Called “Xohm”, Sprint’s WiMAX Cities, Clearwire & Sprint Agree on WiMAX Roaming, Clearwire & SatTV Do a Deal, NextWave Announces Mobile WiMAX Chips, NextWave: WiMAX Chips R Us, Nextwave Buys IP-Wireless, Nortel: WiMAX Train Leaving Station, Clearwire Operational in Hillsboro, Clearwire Gets Carded, Sprint’s Barry West and Clearwire’s Benjamin Wolff, FCC Rules on 700MHz: Limited Open Access, No Wholesale Requirement.
